She remotes to work from time to time, mainly she is starting back for her Masters, so it needs to do schoolwork. She wants a laptop, not tablet or ultrabook, and a big screen- Im looking at 17".
All of them have almost a terabyte HD, so thats not an issue. How fast should her processor be? Is 4 enough? Should I get 6?
I looked on her school deal link,





Inspirion 17R, 6GB/1TB, Office Suite, $851.





WalMart has a 17R for $634, no Office, smaller HD, Im sure there are other differences.
New Egg has similar machines starting at $550.
Imalso looking at only new machines no refurbs. I dont know much about computers if anything- is that a mistake?
Thanks for any help anyone can give me.
 
 

Wait until black friday or after and don't pay more than $600.

Why do you want a 17 inch laptop.  They are pretty much in the domain of gamers and workstations.  Stick with 15 inch and smaller laptops.


http://www.provantage.com/hewlett-packard-hp-b2d26ut-aba~7HEWW2W7.htm

Is Office considered word processing?



Is it I 5, I 6, I 7? I saw an I& in the list I looked at?



thanks!
 

She wanted a big screen.



 

Thats why I am looking, asking & learning now. I will buy Black Friday or Cyber MOnday.



 

I run a Lenovo B570 with an I3 2.2 ghz dual core $300
Stock it worked OK for all your requirements.
win 7 64 bit.
4gig ram
320gig hard drive
It also played wow on medium. 44fps

just an FYI after a while because I could.
I installed a 128gig Crusial M4 solid state drive. 19 sec boot up. About $80 off Newegg.
Then I replaced the Cd-rom with a drive caddy off Amazon for $10 and installed the stock hard drive in it.
External dvd-burner $25 Newegg. For the ocasional use.
Then upgraded to 4gig of ram to 16 $50 off Newegg. recently

The solid state drive reduced loading time of all programs greatly.

IIRC 64 bit windows is required to use more than 3gig of ram.

Really, if you are just needing to do word processing, the old computers back in the 1990s were plenty fast for that. Don't get caught up in all the hustle and bustle about i5 clock speeds n crap. My dinosaur IBM computer with a floppy disk can compute the keys faster than I type.

Get the cheapest 17" laptop you can find. Anything on the market today is good enough for surfing the web/youtube/power point. Spend the saved cash on ammo.

You don't need 4 gigs of ram to run Microsoft Word ffs. More like 1/100th of that.

Big screen or higher resolution?

Bigger screen.





Im looking at two on Black Friday deals...







                         


                         


                           


                         


                               

Dell Inspiron 15R i15R-2106sLV Intel Core i5-3210M 2.5GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB, 15.6-inch for $529.99 Posted at 2012-11-18 09:45:55

Intel Core i5-3210M 2.5GHz processor; ensures fast and powerful computing/ 8GB of DDR3 memory; provides impressive multitasking operations/1TB Hard Disk Drive/DVD Super Multi Burner/15.6" HD Widescreen display/Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

and

Dell Inspiron 17 i17RN-4823BK 17.3-Inch Laptop

• Intel Core i5-2450M 2.5 GHz



• 6 GB DDR3



• 500 GB 5400 rpm



• 17.3-Inch Screen



• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

 
 

The processing speeds are un-godly these days. A general rule of thumb, the more cores the hotter the computer runs and shorter amount of time the battery lasts. I've always though anything bigger than a 15" defeats the purpose of a laptop...but that's just me.

Here is what I use...

Mid-2010 MacBook Pro:
OSX 10.8/Mint 13
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2
8 GB of RAM
440 GB of storage (120 GB Mercury SSD and 320 GB Seagate)
Comments: Love this computer. High school graduation present, boots both Mountain Lion and Mint 13(64-bit) off the SSD (takes about 21 seconds) while all of the music, photos, movies, and etc. for OSX are kept on the HDD. Runs Office, Matlab, Autodesk Inventor (through Crossover) without issue. Battery lasts for 7-11 hours depending on multiple factors.

Asus X101CH:
Mint 13 (32-bit)
1.6 GHz Intel Atom
1 GB of fixed RAM
320 GB Hitachi HDD
Comments: Recently purchased, enjoying it. Battery lasts about 3 hours. 320 GB drive is way too big for a 10.1" netbook IMO. Planning on upgrading to a 120 GB SSD. Runs Matlab, OpenOffice, CHIRP and Echolink (through Wine) without any issues.

Raspberry Pi:
Raspbian
Comments: Fun little toy. There are some things it does well, and things it doesn't. GUI heavily taxes it but it can still display 1080p.

HP dc5800 SFF:
Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS (64-bit)
1.8 GHz Intel Pentium Core Duo
1 GB of RAM
2 TB Seagate (no RAID controller but does have another HDD bay)
Asus Bluray Reader
Comments: This is my current server machine (planning to upgrade to a Proliant N40 in the next 2 months). Headless (SSH into it). No GUI. Runs netatalk, makemkv, Handbrake, and Plex. Does get bogged down when ripping using Handbrake. Main use is as a media server and file storage (multipe Windows OS isos, Linux Distros, full program isos...) and I occasionally SSH into the optical drive for the rare instances I need an optical drive on one of my other computers.

One could say I'm a fan of Unix based operating systems. Most of my computers are fairly low in the processing department but they all work just fine for my uses. Don't need the most powerful processor, especially if general computing is primary concern (gaming is where I7's tend to come into play, though a few of my Comp Sci and Electrical friends run I7's on their desktops at home). The I5 is a good blend (I3's are a little slow on Win 7 for my tastes). I would highly recommend a SSD over a HDD if you can find one suitable to your uses. I'd recommend at least 4 GB of memory for any 64 bit Windows 7 on up machine but 2 will work.

Define her needs a little more precisely.  

Remotes into work, how?  Anything special needed for that?  Check with her company's IT department.

Needs to do schoolwork?  She going to be carrying it around campus?  17" laptops are Big and Heavy.  What kind of battery life does she need?

For school/business use, I would lean toward a business-class laptop in the 14"-15" size.

I have the Toshiba Satellite 17" (forgot the model number).  It's a lttle over a year old, paid $574, and it's an excellent machine.  Too much preloaded crap like Norton, but I deleted it all.  Good machine for the money and it fits in my tactical Tailor backpack.

This, plus look at the business class laptops if you are willing to spend a little more.  Much better quality in the business class.

I would also suggest a 15" model if she plans on carrying it to school etc.  Those 17" ones are freaking heavy.  Just get an extra monitor for the house that she can connect it to for when she works at home.  Dual screens are awesome when writing a paper.  Research on one screen, MS Word on the other.

ETA:  After reading more of the thread.  Get an i5 with 6GB of RAM.  It will be more than enough to get her by for 3-4 years.  And I want to reiterate, look at the 15" laptops.  She will not like carrying around a 17" model.  They are HEAVY.

School is online Masters- no campus carry.



 

15" i5 8GB 1TB $529



Tiger Direct.





Buy it?





And I really appreciate ALL the good help. You guys switched her over to the 15" screen and switched me to buy into growth in chip/GB.


 

It will adequately do what she needs but I'd still recommend the business class laptops.  I'm pretty sure the Inspiron is the lower quality laptop they produce.  Look at the Latitude series.  They will cost you a bit more but are worth the difference in quality IMHO.